"The Second World War has ended, leaving a bruised and fragile peace. But this tranquillity is threatened when a shocking murder takes place in the Sussex countryside. Before long, police experts discover a link to another, earlier, killing hundreds of miles away ... While Scotland Yard detective Billy Styles struggles to find a link between these two murders, a strange twist of fate brings former Detective Inspector John Madden into the investigations....

Miss Dido Kent vacations at a cousin's home and encounters distasteful dealings among Surrey's upper classes in the wake of a neighbor's sudden death, a situation that poses complications to her romance with Mr. William Lomax.